death by a thousand paper cuts
n.— «“My basic position on this is that the more forward-leaning arguments should also be made,” Spindelman said. “This does not mean that they have to be the only ones that are made. Lawyers can argue “in the alternative.” It is possible to challenge the marriage amendment both at the retail and the wholesale level.” “Lambda has exclusively pursued a retail approach to this,” he added. “In popular parlance, death by a thousand paper cuts. There’s no good reason, from what I can tell, why.”» —“Experts disagree on how to combat Ohio’s ban amendment” by Eric Resnick in Columbus Gay People’s Chronicle (Cleveland, Ohio) Dec. 22, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
When there’s no evening meal planned at home, what do you call that scramble to cobble together your own dinner? Some people apply acronyms like YOYO — “you’re on your own” — or CORN, for “Clean Out your Refrigerator...